Estrogens and Women's Health - Benefit or Threat?

Attending the symposium were 46 people, including 26 lecturers.
Invited lecturers included the foremost researchers in this field
from Europe and the United States (among them Bert O'Malley,
Donald Pfaff, Evan Simpson, Kathryn Horwitz, Benita
Katzenellenbogen and Craig Jordan).

The symposium discussed estrogens and women's health, currently
one of the most intensively discussed medical problems, both
nationally and internationally and among physicians as well as
the general public. It focused in particular on issues related to
post-menopausal hormone replacement therapy and associated
elevated risk of breast and uterine cancer. Many other crucial
estrogen-related themes were discussed as well. They included the
role of so-called xenoestrogens (chemicals that contaminate
nature and that have an estrogenic effect) in the supposed
decline in sperm counts and the rising incidence of testicular
cancer among Western men, the role of phytoestrogens (plant
estrogens that we ingest via food) in protecting against breast
cancer, and the effectiveness of estrogenic drugs against fragile
bones, cardiovascular diseases, Alzheimer's disease, etc.

Female sex hormones have widespread clinical use for a variety of
indications, and there is a continuous debate concerning possible
harmful effects due to such treatment. The symposium discussed
the key importance of developing more selective drugs with
agonistic or antagonistic estrogenic effects. In recent years,
new knowledge has greatly changed our view of the effects of
estrogen. Various new data were presented at the meeting. For
example, persuasive evidence was presented for the view that the
new estrogen receptor ERbeta has a biological function different
from that of ERalpha. ERbeta thus seems to have an anti
proliferative effect both in the prostate and the uterus; if
these findings can be confirmed, they may open up interesting new
possibilities for the treatment of prostate and uterine
cancer.

The symposium volume was published in the Journal of Steroid
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology during 2000.

Program

June 29 -
Tuesday

Bofors
Hotel

8.00 a.m.-8.40
a.m.

The estrogen receptor
family and its ligands
Chairmen: Elwood Jensen, Håkan Eriksson